-COMPETITION-

Last
Issue’s Character-Writing competition is over and the winning application has
been displayed below! Now, for this issue the challenge is to write a blurb of
any length and for any sort of book. It need not be more than a paragraph or a
sentence, but can be as long as you like.

The
winning submission will be rated on simple quality, ideas and temptation (how
much it makes the reader want to take a look at the book).

LINK TO BLURB COMPETITION SUBMISSION FORM:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1E0F2ADFlko3c23OW5dSTv72ibYRC01M-k4YYYcXW_-o/viewform

-Winner of Previous Competition-

Congratulations
to Kris Shah, our winner for the previous Character Writing competition.  Kris won for detail, diversity and
interesting characters. Here’s her entry:

CHARACTER ONE – MALE.

NAME: Kelvin Ross

AGE: 13

NATIONALITY: He
comes from a long line of Scots, and hails from Greenock, Scotland

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Ravenclaw

APPEARANCE: Dirty Blonde Hair, grey eyes. Kelvin is of average height and weight for a boy of thirteen, though he
tends to slouch somewhat from the weight of all the books he generally carries
around with him.

His mother trims his dirty-blond hair short when he comes home from
school over breaks, but he lets it grow out for the months in between, so by
the time the end of term rolls around, it can be quite shaggy.

He wears wire-rimmed glasses to correct for his terrible eyesight, and
they only serve to accentuate his rather large ears, which stick out from his
head quite prominently. His robes are fairly new, but they have small holes and
stains on them that are impossible to get out, most caused by experiment
failures in the mini laboratory he set up in his dormitory.

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS AND PERSONALITY:

One thing Kelvin is really good at is
remembering facts and details, whether it's intellectual knowledge or snippets
of conversations from six months ago. He doesn't even really have to try to
remember most things; it just happens, though if he puts actual effort into it,
he can recall things with close to complete accuracy. Kelvin is also very loyal
to his friends, and will drop everything if one of them is having a bad day and
needs someone to talk to, or is struggling with their homework and needs a
hand. He doesn't always know what to say, but he figures that just being there
for someone is the most important thing.

Though he's good with facts and figures, Kelvin
struggles with being able to connect with people. He never feels like he's
saying the right thing, and he always worries that people will laugh at him
behind his back the moment he's gone, which makes it hard for him to trust
anyone. When he's around people, he is often awkward, and many times avoids
starting conversations at all, preferring to stand in the corner and observe
everyone else. Kelvin also has a tendency to get frustrated very easily, both
with himself and with others. It doesn't always take much to set him off -
sometimes a little thing like someone not closing a jar properly can be enough
to make him angry.

Kelvin's mind is always going full speed ahead,
and stray thoughts tend to intrude a lot. Usually, those stray thoughts are
very unhelpful -  useless facts that are
only slightly related to the topic at hand, or observations about the people
and things around him that distract him from what he's doing. He's always
watching everything going on around him, and filing away details that will
likely never be important to remember. When he's interacting with people,
Kelvin also spends a lot of time analyzing them and trying to figure out if
they're annoyed by him or not, because he knows he's kind of weird.

Most of the time, Kelvin is okay with being
different from the people around him, but sometimes he wishes he were good at
things that were more normal, like sports or telling jokes. He really does love
the acquisition of knowledge, though, and he finds all the facts and theories
that he ruminates on to be incredibly interesting, even if other people don't.

Because he finds it hard to fit in, Kelvin spends a lot of time mentally
creating his own worlds, where he has awesome adventures with both historical
and fictional characters. This leads to him zoning out frequently in classes,
and he tends to rely very heavily on being able to understand things faster
than many of his fellow students in order to keep up with the work. When he's
talking to people he doesn't know well, he usually fidgets a lot and feels very
uncomfortable, because he wants to make a good impression but knows that he's
not so good with social skills. With his friends, however, Kelvin is much more
boisterous, as it's easier for him to relax when he knows people aren't judging
him for his idiosyncrasies.

ADDITONAL INFORMATION ON CHARACTER ONE:

Both of Kelvin's parents are Muggle scientists - his father teaches
engineering, and his mother is a botanist, and they raised their son to
appreciate scientific discovery. His parents actually named him after Lord
Kelvin, who determined the correct temperature value for absolute zero. When
the Sorting Hat was trying to place Kelvin in a Hogwarts house, it took a while
to decide between Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw as the best fit for him, but he has
been very happy in Ravenclaw. He also wants to find a way to combine magic and
science to make helpful advances in the standard of living for both the Muggle
and magical worlds, although he knows that dream could take a lifetime to
accomplish.

CHARACTER TWO – FEMALE:

NAME: Sienna Larkin

AGE: 14

NATIONALITY: She was born in London, but grew up in Shrewsbury,
England.

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Hufflepuff

APPEARANCE: Deep brown eyes, dark skin and dark hair.
Sierra is tall for her age, with short dark
frizzy hair that she spends a lot of time styling. She has a bright smile,
which is accented even more by her rich brown skin, and while she doesn't
realize it yet, the boys are starting to notice how lovely she is. Because she
cares a lot about appearance, her clothes tend to be fashionable, and her robes
are always well cared for, even if they are second-hand or hand-me-downs from
her older siblings.

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS AND PERSONALITY:

Sierra is quite good at
both Charms and Transfiguration, having a natural gift for wand work and spell
casting. She finds that the theory in those classes is something that
intuitively makes sense to her, and connecting theory with application also
comes easily. She is also very attentive to the needs of the people around her,
and often goes out of her way to keep people happy, cleaning up messes she
didn't make, or offering to stay after class to tidy up the room.

At her core, Sierra is a
people-pleaser, and she's always trying to figure out what would make her
friends, professors, and even casual acquaintances happy. Her mind is
constantly running through the possible consequences of future actions, trying
to determine what would please those around her. She's also very aware of how
everyone around her reacts to what she says and does, although she tends to be
overly critical of herself, and therefore reads things into their responses
that probably aren't really there. Occasionally, she finds herself wishing that
she could care less about what people think of her, but she hasn't been able to
figure out yet how to let go of her insecurities.

Being a people-pleaser can
be very exhausting, and oftentimes Sierra is simultaneously incredibly anxious
and so tired she can barely muster up the mental energy to do anything. Any
time someone new approaches her, she feels like the fate of the world rests on
that one conversation, even if it's just a question about some random thing the
professor mentioned at the end of class. The only time Sierra actually relaxes
a little is around her closest friends, and she only has two of those - both
guys, because for some reason she feels more at ease with guys than with girls.

Because she's almost always
anxious, Sierra tends to fidget a lot, especially when she has to talk to
anyone. It's rare for her to look people in the eye, as she feels more
comfortable staring at their shoes or over their shoulder than making eye
contact. Often, her palms will get sweaty when she's nervous, and she's
constantly wiping them on her robe. When she walks through the hallways, she
keeps her eyes on the floor, hoping that if she doesn't look at anyone, no one
will try to talk to her. She avoids most social activities like the plague, but
if for some reason she has to attend something, she spends a bit of time hiding
in the corner, and then ducks out as early as she possibly can while still
being polite.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
CHARACTERS:

Kelvin and Sierra are
actually friends, having bonded over a mutual hatred of social events that led
to both of them hiding in the same corner during a school-wide event two years
ago. Sierra finds Kelvin's dabblings in Muggle science to be quite fascinating,
and Kelvin likes having her around, because she never makes fun of him.